Epilepsy came for us on a night when we were celebrating LIFE. I had spent the day of November 15th in labour with my 5th child. When my husband came home i told him this was the day our anticipated baby girl "Sadie" was choosing to be born, and we made preparations to take our other 4 children to their grandparents home to spend the night. We went into the hospital and Sadie was born around 2am. After settling me and little Sadie in at the hospital, my husband went to his parents' home to sleep for the night. When he got there he went in to tell each of the kids about their new baby sister. It was about 5:30 am. A little after he crawled into bed, our son Darren came into the room and said he didn't feel well. My husband Curt let him snuggle in with him. Only a couple minutes later Darren started to shake. Curt was woken up by the jerking and shaking and told Darren to quit it. He kept on. Curt turned on the lights and Darren looked like he was choking. There was froth comming from his mouth and his arms and legs were jerking in what we know now was a tonic clonic seizure. Curt didn't know what was going on and yelled for his mom to call 911. Then he tried to swipe out Darren's mouth. Darren bit down hard. The seizure went on for what seemed like forever but was probably only 3 minutes. Darren fell into a deep sleep and would not respond for about 20 minutes. Ambulances took 25 minutes to respond to the call and by the time they got there Darren was tired but able to respond to questions. *Meanwhile* In the morning after the birth of my baby girl, i got a message from the nurses that my son had had a seizure and was at another city hospital with my husband. Darren and Curt spent the whole day waiting for an EEG and finally came to see me in the evening before bed. Darren looked so pale and tired, but he smiled when he held his baby sister for the first time. My husband told me later that during the seizure he thought that he would loose a child on the same night that one was born to him. We were told by the technicians that the EEG patterns looked like BRE and an appointment was booked for February. From what i read, Benign Rolandic Epilepsy didn't seem like the worst diagnosis. Children usually grow out of the disorder and medication is rarely used to treat it. At our February appointment, the Neurologist ordered an MRI just in case and booked us in for another appointment 6 months later. During that time Darren had 7 seizures, all of them Tonic Clonic lasting about 1-3 minutes each. Some days he had a headache, somedays he felt fine afterwards, and one day, when he had 2 in a row, he was crying and complaining of horrible waves of pain for an hour before advil finally helped him sleep. Then he slept half of the day away. At our next appointment the neurologist waas dissapointed to hear that Darren had had so many seizures. The MRI results were in as well and showed 2 lesions. One was on the parietal lobe and one on the frontal lobe. He prescribed Tegretol. I was shocked. I was expecting him to tell us to come back in a few months and see how he was doing, but not to prescribe medication. I hadn't thought that 1 seizure/month was excessive as i had worked with some children who had multiple seizures/day...AND...i thought, it's only BRE right?? The Neurologist told us that he didn't think it was BRE anymore, and that this form of epilepsy is often hard to treat. He told us that Darren has cortical displasia and is having complex partial seizures with rapid secondary generalization. Every seizure is like a little death now. I see his arms and legs curl inward, his eyes roll or blink with no life in them, and the other night when he called out terrified for me, i ran to him and he was already lost in his seizure. When he woke up he did not remember his terror, his call to me, or my futile attempts to comfort a flailing body. Where was my smart little carefree boy in those minutes before he came back to me? Is he comming back to me the same little boy that called out to me before the seizure began? Will the medication do more damage or the seizures? How do i choose between what i see to be two bad options... allowing him to seize... or medicating my little boy and the possible side-effects? It seems as though the side-effects from the seizures are less and less, but the attacks are slightly more frequent. With each child is the potential for more joy and also more sorrow. I love my little man so much.